The German phraseme construction N1 an N1 and its translation equivalents in the Croatian language

Phraseme constructions constitute a specific and still insufficiently researched subcategory of phraseologisms (Ziem 2018). They are defined as idiomatic combinations of words consisting of a lexical anchor and variable slots, whose meaning is holistic while their structure is syntactically stable. The main aim of this paper, which arises from the PhraConRep project, is to provide a contrastive analysis of the German nominal reduplicative construction N₁ an N₁ and its translation equivalents in Croatian in order to determine the structural and semantic features of this phraseme construction in both languages. The corpus analysis (N = 76), largely extracted from 48 German literary works and their Croatian translations, has shown that the most frequently attested realizations of the German construction N₁ an N₁ are Seite an Seite, Schulter an Schulter, Kopf an Kopf, and Tür an Tür, which is consistent with previous research. In the majority of cases, full structural-semantic equivalence was established, with Croatian equivalents occurring as nominal reduplications of the type N₁ prep. N₁ or as partial equivalents that retain the constructional pattern but fill the variable slots with other word classes (X₁ prep. X₂). The analyzed constructions are predominantly metonymically motivated and highly idiomatic. Their dominant semantic aspect is intensifying. At the same time, 11.82% of the examples show no metonymic motivation (e.g., Haus an Haus, Rücken an Rücken), in which the nouns retain their literal meaning. Such examples reflect quantitative or continuative aspects and are easier to translate due to their semantic transparency. The results confirm that greater semantic and lexical restrictions increase idiomaticity but reduce productivity. While full equivalence displays less variability, cases of partial equivalence and descriptive translations in Croatian show greater productivity and semantic extension, particularly toward aspects of mental, emotional, and ideological closeness, thereby confirming the construction as semantically multilayered.